em in the front row.

On the following Monday evening the major gave a christening party in
honor of this important event. Owing to Mrs. Carteret's still delicate
health, only a small number of intimate friends and family connections
were invited to attend. These were the rector of St. Andrew's; old Mrs.
Polly Ochiltree, the godmother; old Mr. Delamere, a distant relative and
also one of the sponsors; and his grandson, Tom Delamere. The major had
also invited Lee Ellis, his young city editor, for whom he had a great
liking apart from his business value, and who was a frequent visitor at
the house. These, with the family itself, which consisted of the major,
his wife, and his half-sister, Clara Pemberton, a young woman of about
eighteen, made up the eight persons for whom covers were laid.

Ellis was the first to arrive, a tall, loose-limbed young man, with a
slightly freckled face, hair verging on auburn, a firm chin, and honest
gray eyes. He had come half an hour early, and was left alone for a few
minutes in the parlor, a spacious, high-ceilinged room, with large
windows, and fitted up in excellent taste, with stately reminiscences of
a past generation. The walls were hung with figured paper. The ceiling
was whitewashed, and decorated in the middle with a plaster
centre-piece, from which hung a massive chandelier sparkling with
prismatic rays from a hundred crystal pendants. There was a handsome
mantel, set with terra-cotta tiles, on which fauns and satyrs, nymphs
and dryads, disported themselves in idyllic abandon. The furniture was
old, and in keeping with the room.

At seven o'clock a carriage drove up, from which alighted an elderly
gentleman, with white hair and mustache, and bowed somewhat with years.
Short of breath and painfully weak in the legs, he was assisted from the
carriage by a colored man, apparently about forty years old, to whom
short side-whiskers and spectacles imparted an air of sobriety. This
attendant gave his arm respectfully to the old gentleman, who leaned
upon it heavily, but with as little appearance of dependence as
possible. The servant, assuming a similar unconsciousness of the weight
resting upon his arm, assisted the old gentleman carefully up the steps.

"I'm all right now, Sandy," whispered the gentleman as soon as his feet
were planted firmly on the piazza. "You may come back for me at nine
o'clock."

Having taken his hand from his servant's arm, he advanced to meet a lady
who